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Heroin overdose prompts murder charge in Baton Rouge case

BrandonEirick.jpg

Baton Rouge police arrested Brandon Eirick Monday, Feb. 3, 2014, for his role in the death of his girlfriend Leah Hutchinson, who died of a heroin overdose. Eirick allegedly told police he bought the drugs in Mall City, a crime-ridden part of Mid City in Baton Rouge.

For the second time in recent months, local law enforcement officials have demonstrated that residents in Baton Rouge who can be tied to facilitating heroin overdoses may be charged with murder.

Around 8:30 p.m. Monday, Baton Rouge police arrested Brandon Eirick, 30, of 11414 Bard Ave., on a charge of second-degree murder. The charge, a Baton Rouge Police Department press release says, is connected to the death of Eirick’s girlfriend, who died from a heroin overdose.

The local arrest comes a day after extensive media coverage of the sudden death of Oscar-winning actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who New York City police officials said died of a heroin overdose. Coverage since Sunday morning, when the 46-year-old was reportedly found unresponsive in his New York City apartment with a syringe in his arm and had been in possession of multiple envelopes of heroin, has already started to shift from the breaking news of his death toward recent spikes in heroin usage and deaths.

East Baton Rouge Parish Hillar Moore and East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner William “Beau” Clark spoke out in October about the parish’s surge in heroin-related deaths, which more than quadrupled in 2013 compared to the year before. The upward trend has also been reported in the New Orleans-area and across the state.

Baton Rouge police found Leah Hutchinson, 31, unresponsive inside a vehicle in which they were called to on Dec. 18. An unresponsive male was also in the car with her. Responders transported both to the hospital, where Hutchinson later died. The release doesn’t specify the male’s identity. It does say Eirick was Hutchinson’s boyfriend, and they shared the same address, off of North Sherwood Forest Drive.

In November, a grand jury indicted Jarret McCasland, 24, of Denham Springs, for second-degree murder for allegedly injecting his girlfriend, Flavia Cardenas, with a fatal dose of heroin in July. The case has not yet gone to trial. Moore said at the time that drug overdoses are always investigated as a homicide, but only rarely do prosecutors believe they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt who distributed and administered the fatal drug. He called McCasland’s case unusual in that respect.

Details surrounding Eirick’s involvement with Hutchinson’s overdose are unclear. Stay with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune for more on this story.

In East Baton Rouge Parish, the coroner had confirmed 27 heroin overdose deaths by mid-November, up from just five in 2012.